Just Ordinary People - British Settlers 1820 - Liz ESMEADE

"Just Ordinary People" - British Settlers 1820 - Liz ESMEADE 

The lives of some of the forgotten British Settlers of 1820

COVER PICTURE

A view of Grahamstown From the south-West. By Robert Godlonton (Cape Archives Collection) 

PREFACE

Almost two hundred years have passed since the British Settlers of 1820 arrived in the Cape Colony to take their chance of a new life in a wild and inhospitable part of the country. Much has been written about them both as a group and an individual families and through the existing years a great deal of myth, folklore and fabrication has become taken as a fact. This has resulted in stories now firmly rooted in family history with little regards to the facts and, while may stories are gently entertaining, few have bothered to note that while in essence there truth in them, they are highly improbable and in deed, very often highly impossible.

Historians have tented to write only about those Settlers who became prosperous and often have written in terms that imply that they were people of the upper classes of Britain to start with. Indeed, a few were about those classes - although not of the aristocracy. By ignoring the average very ordinary people, who made up the majority of the group, it has  crated a completely false idea among people today that the Settlers were all wealthy, snobbish, people who looked down upon those of other cultures in the Colony - an idea so entrenched that it is now useless to try and change minds!

Another author of a book on the Settlers refers to them as those "carefully selected"  persons who made up various parties. ......   

Hierdie is nie 'n gebinde boek nie, maar gebied met plastiek voorblad en gewone papier geskrif. Stewig verbind